


Stagnant

by Tosa



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Or Is It?, Cannibalism, Creepy Sexual Undertones, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:26:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tosa/pseuds/Tosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caliborn goes on a misogynistic vision quest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> im tagging it cannibalism even tho they're all different species because they're all beings of higher intelligence and u just don't eat those

 

Yellow monoliths – animals or stones, you think, until they fade into orange, deeper orange, and they elongate, rising, rising in the water, set atop black seaweed or – no, hair, hair so long and black, and it covers her eyes but you can make out her plump lips. She continues to rise and her hair is so long it pools around her like a foreboding dark spot in the water, but she has thrown it over her shoulders at least so you can see the collar bone as it rises, the torso, the alien breasts with the vestigial nipples in a strange fuchsia hue a non-mammalian species shouldn't need. As she rises, as more of her appears, you cringe at the sight of the hair between her legs, the shapely hips, her savagely sexual body.

She's risen from the water to stand, the pond eerily stagnant beneath her firmly planted, webbed toes, her nails painted bright, hot pink like her lips. No creature nor wind seems to summon a ripple, almost as if it was never water at all.

Her obscene lips part to reveal serrated teeth, and she flicks her hair out of her eyes, poising her claw-like fingernails to either side of her head, an alien, yes, or perhaps she is a harpy, a shark mermaid.

“If you weren't so impotent, you might fuck me,” she snarls.

→

The tang of salt is still sharp on your tongue when the clang of swords grabs ahold of your attention.

You follow the sound to a tower. Another monolith, this time the only thing punctuating a barren, sweltering landscape. The nearer you get the more it is apparent there are no swords and the sound stops dead, like a computer whose plug has been pulled when you're close enough to the black monolith to make eye contact with Dirk.

He's sitting on a rock, and he's looking at you with little expression. Behind him, the monolith blinks with lights. You'd think it was a building, but there doesn't seem to be a door.

“What do you do,” Dirk asks, “when a male power fantasy fails you?”

He crosses one leg over the other. You don't know what to say. The lights on the monolith blink rapidly.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” you snap. His question has confused you. Therefore you are angry.

Dirk blinks. “Come back when you do.”

→

And without your consent, you are somewhere else. You jerk in surprise at the change of scenery before the coals of your anger burn fiery hot again. How dare he move you without your permission!

You walk up a great hill made of sand. Or, it looks like sand, makes a soft, scratching, falling sound like sand, smells like sand. You wonder why it doesn't cave under your footsteps. You look back and you're not leaving a trail, and this frustrates you.

You reach the hill's zenith and look over it. There, settled in the center of the dune, sand gives way to snow, gives way to a castle like that of the long-lost fairytales of a planet you've been to, but not while it was alive, not while you could know it and its stories truly.

You approach the castle with little caution because you need none. You push down the door and it melts under your fingers. You drag your feet and the sand slides over the snow, and every grain you leave burns through this abomination of scenery, eroding it, forcing it to conform with the rest of the landscape.

Destruction follows you, almost effortlessly, into a grand room deep without the frozen castle. Your presence burns a hole even in a place like this, where the ceilings are high, pointed. Water hits your bare head, and rolls down your skull.

There's a woman on a throne in the center of the room. She is not naked like the last one – smart of her, it's colder than a witch's tit in here – but she is just as alien, if in a different way. You're not even sure she's a living being at first – you thought she was a statue, made of the same black stuff – onyx? obsidian? – of which the monolith is made. She shines unnaturally, but she shifts, she blinks her white, featureless pearl eyes, her cloth-covered chest heaves. She is alive.

Her back is straight. Her legs are apart, her heeled feet firmly planted on the ground. Her lithe fingers grip the arms of her throne.

"Who do you think you are?" She asks, "You dare to come here, and dismantle my castle?"

Her voice is steely, hard as brick, but it reverberates off the walls of ice and reminds you that the palace is empty. You bare your teeth at her. You don't know if her skin is as thick as it looks but she is prime meat for the cutting. "I'm going to put you in your fucking place."

You feel a little chagrined that she doesn't respond with fear. Instead, she raises on skeptical eyebrow. "Do you really think you're capable of such a feat?"

The bitch is insulting you and your body lunges with the force of your sudden and impulsive fury.

You end up showing her. Sure, she puts up a wicked fight, but she's the one who ends up naked and spread open on her back, nipples stiffening and back arching in response to her bare flesh being forced to touch the ice of her throne. Her kingdom is sinking into mud, and in several days' time, the sun will beat the moisture from the dunes until it is barren sand once again.

As the rainfall of her dying castle falls around you, it occurs to you that the texture of her skin is like marble. As your fingers dig deeper into her arms, you figure you will have to use more force than ever before to break this one's shell.

→

This time, you follow the sound of giggling women to the monolith. Again, the sound ceases the moment Dirk is within your view. You scowl - twice, now, with the auditory tricks. You ask Dirk where the women are and he tilts his head, hums. "It seems you've managed to find plenty of women all on your own."

"No, not those women. I mean the ones I heard just... You know what, fuck it." You sit down beside him. He doesn't stretch his legs out like you do, he doesn't slouch the way you do; you are casual as you lean towards him, and he looks more as if he is tired, or perhaps expressing submission. His legs are pressed together. His hands are flat on the rock, against his sides. He is making himself smaller.

The thought that he may be changing, even in the littlest bit, fills you with rage. Well - you are always filled with rage. You are a constantly burning flame that, in quick, random spurts, flares up and massively burns those who don't move away quick enough. This is one of those moments wherein you flare.

You clench your fingers, lower your fist. Dirk looks back at you unflinchingly. He is not unafraid of you in the same way the black queen of frost was - she was more defiant. He is more...

"Why don't you hit me?" You ask him. "Defend yourself!"

Dirk shakes his head. "There's no point. You haven't really threatened me yet."

Another flare. "What was that? You trying to tell me I'm not capable of hurting you?"

You raise your hand again to hit Dirk and your fist hits a wall. You're in a strange room. It's dark, save red lights flashing inconsistently. The smell of Dirk's hair lingers and you are so hard it hurts.

You pull away from the wall, furious and embarrassed, but the dark and the solitude make those feelings dissipate like a tear spilt in a raging desert. Are you still in the desert? Is it just outside? The room before you, as you see it in glimpses of red overlay, is empty. The walls and floors pulse with light, and this reverberates off the floors, the ceiling, as they stretch on for about a hundred feet on all sides. And then... a hole in the ground. As you walk to it, you lift a hand to brush the wall. Smooth. You think, beneath the nauseous, seizure-inducing lights, that it is black. Obsidian, even.

You are inside the monolith.

→

The hole in the floor leads to a set of stairs. You descend them and enter another bare room, its only feature another staircase. Feverish from the lights flashing, from anger, you think that you must've started out at the very top level of the monolith – and how fucking tall is this thing, again? You're going to kill Dirk when you get out of here. You punch a wall or two and gnash your teeth, screaming and yelling curses as you descend through the tower. Then you tire yourself out, so you stop doing that, for a while.

You're thankful later that you conserved at least a bit of that rage. You enter a new floor – you haven't bothered keeping count how many you've passed now, you don't see the point - and in the center of the room is a woman. She is the same species as the first woman, but with different horns – curled, like a ram. She isn't decked in furs like the previous woman nor naked like the first, but you can see the tops of her thighs in what you would hardly call her skirt, and her breasts seem to be in a struggle with the fabric of her top to escape –

The last detail you notice before she hits you are the way her red lips curl at you in disgust, and then after that, you are blind fury.

This one's meat pours a dark red – you can taste it's wrong, different from the previous women's, the bright blue flesh beneath the black queen's carapace, the fuchsia that stained your mouth like a ripe, salty berry when you devoured the fish woman, and now this... this _mockery_ of blood, this liar's flesh, you lick it from your hands, then throw her lifeless body down, too disgusted and dizzy and full from the others to glut yourself.

You descend the stairs again. A boss battle with no gold rewarded, with no secret exits revealed, no treasure trove of delicious delights unlocked. By the time you find your way out of the monolith, you are haggard.

You shade your eyes from the sun, and find Dirk is exactly where you left him, sitting on a rock, his back to the monolith. You give an irritated grunt, and whether he hears you or not, he doesn't turn around. You have to walk to him, circle around to stand in front of him, demand with your physical form that he look at you.

Dirk blinks. His expression is dull. “Your clothes have some rather interesting patterns.” You grunt again. “You must eat like a wild animal.”

You throw yourself down in the sand before Dirk unceremoniously. From there, you gaze up into the other boy's face. Dirk won't meet your eyes. He won't move either, though – his body is locked down, twisted together still like he's trying to conserve space. Fine enough, you think, begrudgingly. More room for you to spread out. You lean in, forcing Dirk to shrink in further.

“You used to be cool,” You growl. It sounds petty. You aren't good with words.

“Your judgment is subjective,” he replies. For some reason, you're dissatisfied with the fact he doesn't laugh at you.

You narrow your eyes. This is just too suspicious. The guy you know, he'd be talking about you, mocking you right to your face. He'd be so subtle you wouldn't even notice it at first. He'd be funny, he'd be cool, he'd be bloodthirsty, he'd...

It hits you, then. Why didn't it occur to you before? “Are you even the real Dirk? Or do you just _look_ like him?” You're getting excited. Yes – surely this is why this creature has been so... dull, has not once picked up a sword, has not once laughed at your expense, has been curling in on himself like a waterless plant in the sun. Because he's not...

The Dirk continues to be infuriatingly impassive. You feel your excitement slip away, jump up into the wind and drift into the sand dunes.

Dirk hums. “Yes and no.”

Your face falls slack. Then the anger comes, and you grit your teeth. “What the fuck does _that_ mean?”

Dirk blinks at you. You're still so close together. You refuse to move, and you silently wonder if he'll tell you to get away. He doesn't.

“I am a guiding figure, for this vision quest of yours. I am an NPC, if you like games, or... a catalyst, of sorts. Earlier, I told you you couldn't hurt me – that is because I am not real. My existence is passive – I am to trigger action without enacting action. I can suggest paths to you, or move you, physically, but I cannot join you.”

Relief rolls off you like waves of heat from the desert sun – yes. A submissive agent. You're not sure you understood the rest of that, but you understand that this isn't the real Dirk. “So that's it – you're a copy.”

Dirk hesitates. The flash of discomfort on his face is the first emotion you have seen him express since this saga began. “I am not necessarily a flawed copy.”

“Yeah, right,” you spit. “The real Dirk wouldn't be this fucking _boring_. He'd – he'd be on this quest _with_ me, we'd be fucking shit up _together,_ you know, like men do!”

“I just told you, I'm not permitted to do those things.”

“Which is exactly why you're a _fake!_ ” If you got any closer, you'd be kissing him. Or biting him. “The real Dirk wouldn't sit like a fucking girl, and treat me like I'm so fucking... so fucking...” You can't find the words, and so you break off into a snarl, because even when language has failed, there is a way to force people to understand. And when you've unclenched your face enough to look, he's back to the same old empty expression. The impassivity! It's nothing like cool indifference, it's... it's not like that at all, it's _repulsive_ , somehow, _weaker,_ somehow...

The catalyst blinks at you. “Perhaps you should've gotten to know me better before you created such an elaborate ideal of me.”

You launch yourself to your feet to stomp around the area. You half expect this not-Dirk to magic you away again, but, mercifully, he leaves you be. You rage and rant in unintelligible, savage grunts and snarls, avoiding looking at Dirk because you know his lack of anger to bolster yours, his lack of fear, even, will only make your mood worse.

A lot of sand has been kicked around, and you are sweating, and air is rushing in and out of your exhausted lungs, and the sound of your panting is broken by a voice. "How do you punish men and women who refuse to fit neatly into your narrow little categories?"

You don't even look up. You smash your face into your hands because the sun is hurting your eyes. “I don't fucking _know_ ,” you shout. Categories – what damn _categories?_ “I've been eating women all day – does that answer your fucking question?!”

You're blinded for the first instant after which you pull your hands from your eyes, the pressure of your palms wreaking painful havoc on your vision. But then there is the merciless sun, setting the sands ablaze so it hurts even to look at the ground, and you find relief only in your shadow stretched wide beneath your feet.

You turn around. Dirk isn't sitting on the rock. He's sitting on the sand. He catches your eye, then lets go of the legs he's been clutching to his chest. Leans back on his palms. Lets his legs fall, splayed, just open enough to be inviting. As if drawn by a magnet, you move towards him. Your feet sink in the sand, but it's not to difficult to get close, to stand over him like a conqueror over a conquest. The feeling you get from the position is vaguely enticing.

Dirk looks up at you, his eyes the color of the sand. "What do you do when a powerful male figure fails you?"

Again, with this shitty, cryptic question. As the last syllables slip past his teeth, Dirk begins to lean back, back, away from a sitting to a reclining, then to a laying position, prostrate at your feet. He looks at you not with allure or fear but with... Interest, you decide. He's curious as to what actions you will enact upon him.

Your upper arms throb with a power you don't remember possessing as you lean down, crouch, cover him, hands on either side of his head propelling you upwards like a steel structure, your limbs the bars and your torso the roof of a menacing cage.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" You ask him. "I don't understand anything you say." Your fingers reach out to brush his skin, and end up curling around his neck. “Why the fuck can't you talk normally?”

“I'm here to guide you,” he says. “Not give you the answers. What's the point of a vision quest if you're handed all of the answers?”

You squeeze once, briefly. He winces, and you feel triumph. Again. You want to see him do that again. “Not so passive now. Are you?”

You start to squeeze steadily now. His eyes narrow in pain. His neck is warm in your hands, sweat from your flesh mingling, because even with your shadow looming over him, this sun, nothing can beat this heat. You rub up against his leg as you lean forward, pressing slightly harder, and when you press your thumb to his adam's apple he makes a soft noise and your dick is rock solid.

You release, only slightly, only enough that he gets a little bit of air into his lungs. He decides to waste it by speaking. “Why do you feel-” he coughs “-the need to punish those who displease you-” he grits his teeth, you're squeezing him harder without even realizing, “-so severely-?”

“Shut up!” you snarl. And then, in a roar, “ _SHUT UP!_ ”

Your hands clamp down with all the strength you have. His eyes are bulging, and his body is moving rapidly now – he's finally struggling against you, his body thrashing and struggling only making you harder.

“Why the fuck can't you people just do what I want?!” You shout. You make the mistake of easing your grip on his throat, to hear what he has to say.

“Are... Aren't I?” he coughs. “Don't you like... people who know... their place?”

You see red. Your hands clench around his throat until they are trembling from the force of the grip, and his mouth opens wide, and his eyes roll into the back of his head, and you feel his nails sink into the meat of your wrists.

“I don't,” you snap, “I _don't_ want that!Not from you! You're a fucking _man!_ Don't you _get it?!_ It's WRONG for you to be SO. FUCKING. PASSIVE. THAT'S FOR THEM. FOR THOSE FUCKING. _WRETCHED_ BITCHES. DON'T YOU. GET IT?!”

Every punctuation mark is emphasized by a shake, a clutch of your hands. He's clawing weakly now, fingers slipping, hardly able to reach far enough forward to even touch you. Eventually, his thrashing lessens until it stops altogether, and the fingers of his left hand, his drawing hand, gently brush the pictures they've carved into your skin. (They've only just barely broken flesh – they'll heal within a day or so.) And then his fingers fall away, his hand crumbling to his chest.

Dirk is completely still. His glassy eyes gaze off to the side, at nothing. You scowl, wipe your hands on your pants despite the fact nothing, physically, is on them, and you feel the rough grains of sand that is clinging to your jeans roll over your palms. You're irritated, that Dirk died this easily. You look at his corpse like you would a child who has failed to perform a simple task.

You don't bother stripping him before you reach out and, using the sheer force of your claws, tear chunks of flesh from his body. You stuff the pieces into your mouth, the fabric of his torn shirt flattening to your tongue, and when you've swallowed the meat you pause before putting the next bit of flesh in your mouth to suck the blood from the fabric like a nursing animal with an impotent mother sucks milk from a cloth. Then you spit the fabric out, and resume your last of many meals of the day. His blood is the same shade as yours - not a wretched fuchsia, not a phony maroon, nor a ridiculous blue, but bright red, like candy. You must taste the same.

You imagine your skin turning the same human shade as Dirk's, dotted with fine hairs and pores and patches of imperfection, imagine his hair bursting from your naked skull, laugh at the idea that by eating him, you can become him. Because why would you want to? He died so easily.

There is no point, you think, in adoring the weak.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should be working on the numerous fics in the pound of flesh series, but Stagnant had been sitting in my folder since mid-september, and I wanted to prove to myself I could finish it

When you have had your fill, you stand up, wipe your mouth, and swivel your head around. Now to find your way out of here.

→

You are being baked alive for some cannibal god that has grown angry with your refusal to share. You glutted so heavily on meat your first day in the desert and barely left any for the carrion. Now you stagger through the sweltering heat, your feet sinking into the sand, leaving a trail so that any living creature, if there even are any, can follow you. You'd welcome them – you need sustenance. You'd drink their blood, even, you're so desperate for water. You think of the fish woman's blood rising, staining the stagnant pond and shiver with desire.

Days. You've been in this dreamscape for days, or one, very long day, for the daylight has not ceased since you arrived here. Sand stretches out on all sides of you, a flat horizon line. You're not actually sure how much time has passed – you only know that it has to be longer than a day, two, three.

Every once in a while, in the beginning, you would stop to throw yourself down on the sand, kicking and screaming, cursing Dirk and the fish woman and the black queen and the half-naked bitch, for not telling you what it'd be like out here before they went and died. Then, after a day, or two, or three, you stop throwing temper tantrums. You trudge quietly on, your brow creased by sun and anger.

Then, it happens. You take a step forward, and, suddenly, just at the horizon, touching the edge of the desert, there is... darkness. You rub your eyes – has night finally come? Have the hours spent in this light been a fever dream, the heat stretching twelve hours into a hundred? But, no – no matter how long you look, the darkness doesn't encroach, doesn't fill the sky unless you move towards it.

So you move towards it. If anything, it is a change.

You walk for several hours more before you finally reach the edge of it. Blackness swallows the sky, like paint thrown over the world, except... that doesn't seem to be black sand, but... abyss. You hesitate before taking your first step into the darkness. When there proves to be solid ground, you walk forward.

And you keep walking, until the desert disappears behind you, and you are moving through total darkness. You can see yourself, your whole body fine – but you can't see a bottom, a top, dimensions or paths of any sort. You're about to give up and turn back around when an intense, white light glows in the distance.

God, you hope it won't take long to get there. Despite still having had nothing to eat for what you perceive to be days, you can feel your energy and, with it, your anger, returning. It's almost as if the light is reviving you...

It takes roughly twenty minutes to be able to make out the form and shape of the light. It's a great, big spiral, with many tails coming out on it, and it seems to be a fixture on... well, what would be a floor, if this place wasn't such a damn ceaseless abyss. You're starting to get annoyed with these spacial tricks.

Standing in the center of the spiral is a green creature, with a head like a bare skull, except for two bulging, lime-colored eyes. It's like looking in a mirror.

Your lips twist into a grin. “Sister,” you greet her. It's all making sense now. This is what you've wanted all along. This is what you've been hungry for – not blood like yours, but _flesh._ _This_ is the meal that your gnawing hunger has been culminating to. Your sister. Calliope.

She smiles gently at you. “Hello, brother. I hear you've had quite a journey.”

“Understatement,” you growl, taking a step forward. You mentally curse her when she doesn't flinch, but then, her special talent has always been her ability to piss you off. She stands with her spine straight, her arms behind her back – exposing her torso! The idiot! She's making this too easy, and so you prolong it, approaching her slowly, encroaching on her personal space. She won't lean back when you've gotten close, won't let you pretend to have any height on her. God, you wish you were taller – _something_ to make her cower.

Her eyes crinkle at the corner. Bizarre, the things bone faces can do in this impossible place. “You know, brother, each of those people had something to tell you, if you'd only listen. But you didn't bother, did you? You just... rushed in, like some bloody soldier on a conquest, trampling everyone you came across.”

You scowl. “Yeah? So what? It's my journey!”

“But you've gotten nothing from it.”

“I wouldn't say that.” You grin menacingly, lean in. “I've acquired. Quite the taste.” You want her to smell the rank of dead flesh on your breath. “And I'm hungry for more.”

She winces. “You shouldn't be hungry at _all_. No physical sensation in this place is real. You don't need any sustenance to survive here...”

“Doesn't matter.” You pinch her cheek briefly, and there, it's not fear, but at least you've made her emote. “I'm going to gobble you up. Regardless.”

She falls quiet, her polite, strained smile turning inwards. If she had lips, she'd purse them. “I see,” she murmurs. Those gigantic, green eyes are fixed on yours, and you can't look away. They're glassy. She's sad, though for what reason, you have no idea. All you know is that you're probably responsible, and you're glad for it, petty child that you are. She deserves to be unhappy.

Then she smiles at you, and reaches forward. You flinch as her hand touches your cheek in turn. “Now I truly see, brother.” She brushes your face gently. Her claw of a hand feels unusually soft. “You can never learn. You can never change.”

You grit your teeth, reaching up to tear her hand away. “Yeah? Well-”

And then there is a hole in your stomach, and your ears are ringing. You blink, bewildered. In her right hand, the hand not touching your face, there is a gun, and it is white, emanating light, and you. You bring your hand, which hand, the hand not touching hers agonizingly slow, to your stomach, and feel the fleshy ridges of torn fabric and flesh.

She cries when she shoots you, again, right in the heart, and when you crumple to the floor she comes with you, petting you, apologizing profusely. You are in a state of shock as your fingers catch the blood, fumble at the sensation of your candy red blood running through your fingers – she was armed. None of the women you met today were armed. Not even Dirk had been armed. You... you weren't expecting that. You never dreamed she'd retaliate.

You try to talk without having any words prepared and all that comes out of your mouth is a wet gurgle. She lets out a whimper in reply and keeps petting your head, your face. “I'm sorry,” she whispers. “But it's the right thing to do. You'd never change, brother. There's nothing salvageable about you, you're – you're positively stagnant, morally, I-I'm so sorry...”

Her words rush over you. You have no idea what she's saying. All you know is that the spiral on the floor is dimming. You can't see the tears on her skin. You wonder at the lack of stars in this space.

The abyss closes in.

→

Somewhere, maybe, Caliborn awakes in an angry huff. Even in his dreams, his sister is always ruining things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're lucky I didn't have calliope lecture him on the cultural appropriation of vision quests. I was seriously considering it. Not for humor or irony, either.

**Author's Note:**

> the second part is much shorter and will come soon. I just want this chapter to sink in for a few days.


End file.
